Some Good News: Mega-Landlords Busted for Using AI Algorithms to Price-Fix the Rental Market
Another example that's shattering the free market myth
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Okay friends, let’s play a little game.
What do all these ten massive corporations have in common, aside from the fact that they hoard houses and weaponize the threat of homelessness to extract passive rents from active workers?
1. Greystar:
America’s biggest property management firm hoards 794,000 homes (including 100,000 student beds.)
2. Trammell Crow Company:
A subsidiary of the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm.
3. Lincoln Property Co:
Controls 403 million square feet.
4. FPI Management:
155,000 units.
5. Avenue5:
Hoards $22 billion worth of homes that should be owned by human beings.
6. Mid-America Apartment Communities:
101,229 homes.
7. Essex Property Trust:
Controls 62,000 units, focusing on “supply-constrained markets.”
8. AvalonBay Communities, Inc:
88,405 apartments.
9. Cushman & Wakefield:
172,000 units.
10. Cardinal Group Holdings, LLC:
100,000 student beds.
What do all these massive corporations have in common, aside from the fact that they hoard houses and weaponize the threat of homelessness to extract passive rents from active workers?
That’s right:
They’re all named in a lawsuit that says they use AI software to collude, price-fix, and keep rents jacked to the tits.
Here’s how it works:
Predatory land-lorder corporations get investment money from the richest parasites in human history.
The land-lorders use the money to outbid working people for houses.
The land-lorders rent those houses back to the people they outbid.
The land-lorder uses RealPage Property Management Software’s AI algorithms to covertly see what all the other land-lorders are charging in rent, so they can all push up their prices together. RealPage calls it “business intelligence” to “accelerate profitability.”
The result:
Skyrocketing rent prices globally (yay AI)
Homelessness growing in nearly every city on Earth.
Bubble-sized house prices for all (because land-lorder corporations are bidding up prices, knowing they can pay more because they’ll have a source of income.)
Drastically falling homeownership for the working contributor class (it’s through the floor for Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha compared to Gen X and Boomers at their age.)
Housing hardship for billions of human beings thanks to increased mortgage payments and rent payments, leaving less money for health, well-being, and general spending… which means fewer jobs… which means wages kept low… which means less spending… if you understand anything about mathematics, you’ve already perceived that bankster and land-lorders — the parasite anti-economy — have initiated an economic doom-loop.
I hope all these companies get sued, go bankrupt, and all their leaders and investors get thrown in jail where they have to work a real job that actually contributes something to humanity instead of stealing the wealth that others create simply by hoarding the shelters they need to survive.
But of course, none of that is going to happen.
These parasites have raked in trillions in rents, and have billions to spend on high-priced lawyers, lobby-bribing, and sponsoring (s)elected politicians.
Sure, they might have to get more covert about it, but AI pricing isn’t going away.
And remember: Land-lorder investors are compounding their gains, meaning this is only the beginning of the working class’s housing hardship.
The worst — by far — is yet to come.
Higher house prices.
Higher rents.
More public debt.
More inflation.
More tax rises.
More public service cuts and privatization/corporatization.
Far less well-being for the bottom 99%.
There’s a reason life expectancy is falling:
For-profit corporations are bleeding us out.
Two closing thoughts:
First: The free market is a myth.
The idea that the world would somehow be better off if there were zero rules protecting the masses from predatory investors is not only deluded and insane, but it’s unfathomably dangerous. A rules-free-market is a black market where the worst actors win.
Capitalism is all about incentives, and investors have twisted the global economy to incentivize extraction and exploitation.
Second: The modern rules-free-market isn’t what the father of capitalism Adam Smith meant when he said “the free market.”
He meant a market free from parasites.
A global economy where the people who get paid the most are the people who actually create the most wealth for others — farmers, home builders, the small children making our t-shirts, the slaves making your cell phones, etc. — not the banks, corporations, land-lorders, and their rented politicians.
For-profit land-lording is the lording of land — the monopolization of that which is required for human survival.
It is a demonic evil, and it must be destroyed.
Sadly, AI is poised to make it preeminent.
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